Suzanne Robinson (23 page)

“Let go of me, you vile mongrel!”

Georgiana twisted around in his arms and tried to kick him. Nick dodged her feet, then scooped her up in his arms. She fought him, trying to land a blow to his chin with her fist. Nick stalked past an astonished stable boy to the back lawn with Georgiana ranting at him and fighting all the way. He sat down with her on
a bench beside the Italian fountain, with its unicorn rising from sprays of silver water, and pulled her over his lap.

“Someone ought to have whipped you a long time ago,” he said.

Red-faced and furious, Georgiana felt his hand drawing her skirt up over her legs and hips. She let out a screech, braced herself, and rolled sideways. She slipped off his lap and dropped to the ground, landing on her bottom with her skirts hiked above her knees. She glared up at him, cursing the fact that he looked desirable even when he’d thrown off his coat, his damp shirt clinging to his body. Nick laughed, leaned back on the bench, and let his gaze scour her barely covered legs and thighs.

“Bloody hell, you were a sweet piece. And hot for it, too.”

“Ohhhhh!” She thrust her skirts down, scrambled to her feet, and ran.

“Don’t go, love,” he shouted. “Come back and let’s have another roll. I’ll even do you in the plunge bath like you want!”

Vision blurred by her tears, Georgiana blundered up to the terrace. She yanked open a door and rushed inside, pursued by Nick’s mocking laughter. As she ran upstairs, she knew she would remember that musical, demeaning sound for the rest of her life.

Nick watched Georgiana disappear into the house, then went back to the stables. A groom had unsaddled Pounder and was walking him around the yard to cool him down. He took the reins from the man and dismissed him. His hands shook from raw fury born of pain. He felt dirty, as if the muck of St. Giles was oozing from his pores, leaving him soiled and disgusting in the sight of everyone, especially Georgiana.

“Precious blue-blooded bitch,” he said to the horse. “Finally showed herself for what she is, old fellow. She don’t mind me when I’m pleasuring her in secret, but she don’t want me any other way.”

Leading Pounder down a bridle path, he muttered to himself, “Ought to leave her here on her own. That’s what I ought to do. Let her marry some rotting old blister. Serve her right.”

She hadn’t cared that he’d been in love with her, that he had set his heart at her feet, that he had been prepared to sacrifice that love for her own good. She’d hardly listened to him. Too busy stepping on his offering
with both feet. In spite of all her fine talk, in her heart Georgiana Marshal’s opinion of him was the same as Evelyn’s and Prudence’s.

The little tart didn’t want him. And he would never forgive her for voicing his deepest and most painful secret—that he was forever and irrevocably polluted by St. Giles, and that he’d never be good enough for a good woman. A truly noble lady would have forgiven him his transgressions, wouldn’t she? But how could a gently reared girl forgive the things he’d done—the thieving, the killing?

Even now, after years away from the slums, he could still kill without remorse, quickly, efficiently, and without hesitation. He’d done so when he’d caught Tessie’s murderer and when he and Jocelin had caught one of those obscene degenerates who preyed on children. Perhaps Georgiana had sensed his lack of remorse without knowing it.

Nick walked Pounder back to the stables, tethered him, and began to wipe him with a sponge. He couldn’t forget the way Georgiana had looked at him after he’d forced himself to give her up. Her nostrils had quivered as if she’d smelled the vile excrescence inside him, and she’d looked as if she were going to puke at the sight of him. Even now the memory of that look made him cringe inside, made him hate himself even more than before. She’d made him feel like a pile of steaming horse manure sitting on a silver serving platter.

Resting his cheek against Pounder’s shoulder, he murmured, “To hell with her, Pounder. Let her marry whoever she wants. We’ll get out of here and go back to Texas.”

And face Jocelin? The little bitch was still in danger
from poor Lady Augusta, and Jos would never forgive him if she got killed. So what was he going to do?

Picking up a brush, Nick stroked Pounder’s back and made circles on his withers. What he wanted to do was make Georgiana as miserable as she’d made him. He couldn’t do that if he left. Pain was an excellent spur to vindictiveness. He’d stay. Stay and make her pay for saying he’d taught her the pleasures of having a lover once she married. He’d hound her. No matter what poor, wrinkled sod she chose for her next betrothed, he’d find him and run him off.

He’d do the same for the next, and the one after that, until she realized her only recourse was to marry suitably. Of course, he didn’t care who her suitable match was, so long as he wasn’t aged or an invalid. In fact, he might be able to arrange it so that she married one of those selfish bastards she abhorred. Plenty of them around, any chap with a title ought to do. The key was to keep her from marrying some old man until Jocelin was well enough to come home and deal with her.

The groom reappeared, and Nick relinquished the brush to him. Walking back to the house, he realized he’d still have to pursue Threshfield’s murderer, and he’d have to do all the work himself. He’d search the family rooms for belladonna during dinner. He wasn’t hungry, anyway. Reaching his rooms, Nick had a bath brought up, and soaked in steaming water until dark.

Before he dressed in his dark thieving costume, he sent word to Prudence that he was indisposed and wouldn’t be down for dinner. Then, when the whole staff was scurrying to keep up with the monumental
ritual of an upper-class dinner, Nick slipped out of his room. Much of the house was dark except for dim light cast by an occasional candle in a wall sconce. The earl had yet to put in gas lighting. Nick skulked his way through the house to the wing occupied by Evelyn, Prudence, and Ludwig.

He chose to search Evelyn’s room first, because in his opinion Evelyn would murder his own mother to become the noble lord of Threshfield. As he expected, the door to Evelyn’s rooms was unlocked. He turned the knob and slid inside what had once been an antechamber. It had been converted into a sitting room with a heavy carved desk and uncomfortable looking armchairs.

Nick was quietly riffling a drawer when he heard a footstep in the bedroom. Closing the drawer, he floated over to the door and cracked it open. By the light of a single candle resting on the floor, he beheld Georgiana on her hands and knees, bottom in the air, peering under a bed. Nick stepped into the room and crept up behind her.

Folding his arms over his chest, he said quietly, “He wouldn’t put it there.”

Georgiana cried out and rose, hitting her head on a bed board. She gasped, clutched her head, and subsided onto the floor.

“Sneaking ass!” she hissed, glaring up at him.

“You keep a civil tongue about you, or I’ll finish that whipping.”

Scrambling to her feet, Georgiana confronted him. “You do, and I’ll scream.”

“Good, that. It’ll bring the whole household, and then you can explain what you’re doing in Hyde’s bedroom, because I won’t be here.”

“You’re a low, common—”

“Stow it, George. I heard you the first time.”

He turned his back on her and scanned the room. Going to the fireplace, he began pressing various protrusions on the mantel. Georgiana followed him.

“Why are you fondling the marble?” she asked.

“These old houses got lots of hidden compartments built in. Speaking of fondling, how about another tumble now that you’re broken in?”

“You are the vilest creature!”

He enjoyed the way she turned scarlet and hissed like a locomotive. He watched her hips sway as she flounced away from him and began searching a wardrobe. When he finished with the fireplace, he joined her. Shoving her aside, he ran his hand along the inner walls, searching for compartments. Georgiana made another snide comment about his vileness and opened the chest at the foot of the bed.

“At least we agree on who might have killed poor old Threshfield,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?” came the chilly response.

“You tried Evelyn bloody Hyde’s rooms first. You got to think he’s the most likely to have done it.”

“Indeed I do not,” she said as she lifted a blanket out of the chest. “I simply chose a room. It’s obvious that poor Augusta has gone completely mad. I’m sure she imagined Threshfield to be a spy and poisoned him. Then, when she came to her senses again, she realized what she’d done and immediately blamed me. You said she told you I murdered him.”

“Why should Lady Augusta be better at killing her brother than at killing you? She hasn’t even managed that.”

Georgiana was bending over the chest and with-drawing
pillows. “It could have been Prudence. She could have seen her plans to become a countess, and eventually a duchess, threatened.”

“You just don’t want to believe your precious Evelyn might have poisoned his own uncle.”

Georgiana straightened and sat back on her heels to gaze at him with remote amusement. “Mr. Ross, Evelyn wouldn’t dirty his hands with murder. If those two are involved, it’s due to Prudence’s actions and guidance.”

“And of course old lost-in-the-past Ludwig couldn’t have done it.”

She gave him a disgusted look and resumed her examination of the chest. “Don’t be absurd. The only thing Ludwig cares about is the collection.”

“And you.”

The reply came from the dark interior of the chest. “I would have expected that lewd suggestion from you.”

“It wasn’t lewd, just on the mark, Your Imperial Highness.”

Nick glanced around the room, eliminating various obvious hiding places, then started to roll up the carpet. He was walking on the floorboards, testing each with his feet, when he heard a hollow creak. Georgiana looked up from the chest as he knelt and knocked on the floor.

He pulled a knife from his belt, slid the blade between two boards, and lifted. A square section of the floor came up. Georgiana closed the chest and walked over to the stand beside him. Nick stuck his hand into the compartment he’d revealed and removed a tin box. Opening it, he looked inside, but it was too dark to see the contents.

Ignoring Georgiana, he took the box to the bedside table where she’d moved the candle. He opened it again and looked inside.

Nick whistled softly. “Strike me blind.”

“Let me see,” Georgiana said.

Nick snapped the lid closed. “Nothing here.”

“Then let me see,” she said, holding out her hand in that imperious way that made him want to swat her behind.

“You don’t want to see what’s in here,” he said.

“I’ll simply wait until you’re gone if you don’t show it to me.”

Bloody princess
. “All right, Your Royal Highness, have a squint.” He shoved the box into her hands.

Georgiana opened the container and held it close to the candle. Within lay a folio, which she opened to reveal an engraving of a naked woman lying on her back, her legs spread to reveal her most private parts. With a squeak Georgiana slapped the cover closed on the folio. Her hands slipped, and she nearly dropped the box. Nick caught it and shut the lid.

“No belladonna in there,” he said lightly. “Did you get a good look?”

Georgiana whirled around so that her back was to him. He grinned nastily and continued his search of the room. He was almost finished when she turned to face him.

“Men are disgusting!”

“What would you know about it, Your Majesty?” Nick searched the spaces between the drapes and the windows.

“I know Evelyn, and—and my uncle,” she said. Her lip curled. “And
you.
”

He let a curtain fall and stalked over to Georgiana.

“You didn’t think I was so disgusting a while ago. Come to think of it, you was bloody begging for it. Panting and moaning and lifting me with your hips.”

Georgiana covered her ears. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, you loathsome wretch.”

“Want me to prove it?”

He took a step that brought him so close, his chest touched hers. Georgiana hopped backward with a cry.

“Don’t come near me.”

He took another step, and she hopped again. Amused, Nick repeated his actions, and again she leaped without looking only to back into the chest at the foot of the bed. She dropped hard into a sitting position. Nick braced his legs apart and planted his fists on his hips as he laughed down at her.

“You’re all dithered ’cause you know it’s the truth. You just don’t want to hear it.” As he gloated over Georgiana’s discomfort, a sudden thought came to him. “Know what, Your Majesty?”

“Get out of my way.”

She lifted her legs and tried to scoot to the side, but he moved with her, blocking her escape.

“Know what?” he repeated. “I could make you want me again. Right here, on this chest.”

Her back straightened, and she lifted her nose in the air. “As I said, you are disgusting.”

Nick bent over her and spoke clearly but quietly. “Tell you what. I’ll leave you alone. In fact, I’ll scarper. Go back to Texas. And you can marry whatever calcified old fossil you want. If …”